1200 Glasgow council workers to start indefenite strike
“If they want a fight, let’s give them one”!
Environmental workers in Glasgow will be starting an indefenite strike from Monday 10th August in a dispute against the City Council and in defence of the working week. Following a successful strike ballot in June the Council agreed to withdraw redundancy notices they had sent out to workers with demands that they sign new contracts of employment, including the issue that was at the heart of the dispute the proposed ‘four days on/ four days off’ rota. This would involve weekends being viewed as normal working days. Despite negoitiations there has been no significant movement by the employers and the strike action will now begin involving street cleaners, and roads and parks staff who are members of the GMB, Unite and Unison. Bin workers who are not included in the strike ballot are expected to refuse to cross the picket lines.
Click to read the article we carried in June explaining the background to the dispute.
Ian Leech, Glasgow Unison, personal capacity
In a bid to make further budget savings, Glasgow City Council have tried to continue its assault on workers’ conditions of employment. The latest group of employeers to come under attack are the 1200 street cleaners, parks staff and road workers. The Council plans see the scrapping of the current 5 day working week and placing all staff on a rota system of four days on and four days off. According to the council there will be longer working days but fewer days worked over a year in a bid to save £5 million and increase the level of service to the public.
In preparation for imposing the new conditions the Council sent out redundancy notices and letters to all staff organised in three unions GMB, Unison and Unite, informing that their contracts were terminated and offering new contracts on the new conditions. The message from the council being that ‘if you do not sign the new contract then you should consider yourself sacked’!
A packed meeting of workers took place at Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre during May where the member’s anger spilled over. The members accused their union leaderships of being slow to react to the threat from the council and demanded to know why their union continues to pay money to the Labour Party in return for being kicked in the teeth! The members view the attack on the five day working week as contradicting the council’s commitment to ‘work/ life balance’ and will affect time spent with families. The negotiating team reported that, in response to a threat of industrial action, the council officers had said ‘bring it on’. This drew anger from the workers who agreed with one contribution which declared “If they want a fight, let’s give them one”!
A ballot of the union branches involved has returned a majority in favour of an all out strike. First into action will be the street cleansing teams but the action could quickly spread to other environmental workers who, although at the time of writing, have not been balloted, have indicated that they will refuse to cross any picket lines and will therefore be ‘picketed out’. News of this has drawn comments about a return to the 1970’s types of strike tactics. Glasgow Council has already indicated that it may attempt to use ‘scab labour’ in the form of outside contractors to undermine the action.
